


something borrowed and real damned blue

by mushydesserts



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Sad Porn, Unrequited Love, Weddings, i guess, nyx tops gladio bottoms, one-night stand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 21:59:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11449887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mushydesserts/pseuds/mushydesserts
Summary: "You know what was a bad idea," Nyx pants, the new King's Shield's face pressed to the inside of his thigh."Falling for people who've been promised to each other since birth," comes the muffled reply."I was going to say that third shot of tequila," he says, "but sure, that too."(Gladio is wildly in love with Noctis. Nyx is wildly in love with Luna. The wedding is... an awkward affair. Kinkmeme fill.)





	something borrowed and real damned blue

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my drafts for ages, but seeing as FFXV rarepair week is drawing to a close, I thought I'd throw it out there!
> 
> Based on [this prompt](https://ffxv-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3451.html?thread=4334203#cmt4334203). It's really just an excuse for me to write yet another depressing one-night stand for both of them, yeah, sorry guys.

 

Music and laughter drifted through the Tenebraean night air, and Nyx Ulric had never been so miserable.

Chatter floated out through the wide ballroom windows into the summer evening. The murmurs mingled with the tiny paper floating lanterns scattered in the air, strings of star-shaped blue-and-white wildflowers, the scent of berries and perfume. Birds with fire-colored plumage sat in airy copper cages, fluttering to and fro between the branches twined around the marble columns. Gauzy drapes waved and shimmered in the breeze. The crystal-glass windows shone warmly, almost like Lucian magic caught in a bottle.

Nyx didn't know anybody here. The crowds were mostly well-dressed nobles from near and far, gleaming braids and glittering medals, jewels and tulle and satin and stiff brocade. Everybody was in good spirits, or at least pretending to be. Nyx was proud to say he'd cleaned up some himself, but maybe the dark expression on his face had been keeping people away, because nobody had talked to him at all, aside from waiters offering him drinks every so often. He invariably accepted with a heartfelt thanks.

He wasn't technically on duty. He was in formal uniform, sure, because wedding and all, but his orders had been to _go on, enjoy yourself._ Frankly, he wasn't doing so well.

He scowled.

They'd done it. They'd won the war.

The Empire was fallen. The King of Lucis had returned, the Oracle of Tenebrae was triumphant, and tonight they joined their kingdoms and their houses, melded their souls forevermore. Mission accomplished.

And here was Nyx, sulking on the balconies about it.

They really should've invited Crowe and Libertus instead. Maybe they'd _hated weddings, no thanks, you go ahead, war hero,_ but there are attractive, important rich people here in important, funny outfits, and they'd at least be having _fun._ They wouldn't have been trying to forget the way Lunafreya Nox Fleuret had smiled at the King of Lucis, smiled in her blue-gold and ivory-paper dress, smiled in a way that Nyx was sure twelve years of constant television coverage had never caught once.

And the King had smiled back.

Nyx couldn't even hate the bastard.

"A glass, sir?"

Nyx glanced up. He looked at the waiter's sympathetic gaze, then down at the tray of drink offerings — _probably_ wine, he couldn't be sure — and drained the rest of his old glass. It'd do.

"Thanks," he said, picking up another. Then — fuck it — he snagged a second glass, nodded, and slunk off to find some dark corner to mope in.

\---

The corner he found, it turned out, was already inhabited.

It was out of the way at the far end of the hall, beyond the exits to the guest wing of the palace. The wide terrace was all stone benches and half-crumbled statues — evidently left that way as a monument to the city's long history. Ivy grew on the walls, folding screens flanking the low railings, and the only illumination was the light filtering through the ballroom windows high above.

Nyx half-expected to find some couple necking drunkenly in the bushes. He was ready to turn around and go back the way he came, but then the figure — just the one — twisted around and caught sight of him. "Hey."

Nyx stopped. He recognized the man.

The new King's Shield. He was a good few years younger than Nyx, but his hair had grown out of his military cut already, and from what Nyx had seen, he could comfortably wipe the floor with at least half the Glaive.

"Uh, hey," Nyx said. "Spot taken?"

"Nah," the man said. Gladiolus, that was the name. "I can go." He made to get up.

"No, you don't have to," Nyx insisted. "It's just me." Gladiolus frowned at him, and Nyx glanced belatedly at the two glasses in his hand. His face heated. "Mine," he asserted. "Well, unless you want one."

Gladiolus looked down at his own mostly-empty glass. "Wouldn't mind," he conceded. Nyx offered a glass and he took it.

The rest of the terrace was empty. Nyx knew that the King had brought along at least two other members of his own Guard for the ceremony — an advisor, and a newly-commissioned officer that Nyx only sort of recognized from photographs a few years back — but they were nowhere to be seen.

Nyx looked around. "Mind if I sit?" he asked.

Gladiolus indicated that he did not. Nyx sat gingerly on the railing next to him.

Gladiolus tilted his head. "So. Ulric," he said.

"Nyx," Nyx corrected.

"Gladio," the other said in turn, gesturing to himself. "Having fun?"

"Sure," Nyx said forcing a grin. He hoped it didn't look as stiff as it felt. "You?"

Gladio stared at him, nonplussed. "Yep. Fun."

Nyx tried not to wince.

Gladio swished his wine. "Ain't you supposed to be looking after the Princess? Queen," he quickly amended.

That's what the papers said. Luna had insisted. If she was to have a personal Guard, Nyx would be first on it. Nyx suspected that his superiors had been quietly relieved to have him off their hands; he might have been good in a fight, but he hadn't exactly been easy to manage.

Nyx looked at him. "Aren't you supposed to be looking after the King?"

Gladio made a hmm sound, like _point,_ and gestured up at the ballroom windows. The light painted his face multicolored. "Guess they got each other to look out for them now," he said.

Nyx let out a breath. "Seems like the toughest parts of our jobs are over," he said.

"I could learn to like retirement," Gladio agreed. He raised his glass, and Nyx tapped it with his own.

Nyx stole another glance, sidelong and awkward. The two of them should probably get to know each other at some point, seeing as their duties would be overlapping for the foreseeable future. The Glaive hadn't mingled with the Guard very often back in the old Crown City — better to stick to your own — and Nyx wasn't entirely sure where to begin. But he decided to just ignore the whole thing and start fresh.

"So, guess we're gonna be flatmates," Nyx said. "Anything I should know about the King before we move in?"

Gladio shifted. "Shitty taste in music," he said. "Don't change what he's got playing in the car, no matter how much it's killing you. He'll skin you." Nyx chuckled. "How about Her Majesty?"

Nyx thought of Luna, and about all her little quirks he'd gotten familiar with over the past year that most people wouldn't know about. He wondered if there was anything he'd need to warn the King about. _Nothin', she's godsdamned perfect_ probably wouldn't go over well.

"Watch her around other people's dogs," Nyx settled on. "If she thinks they aren't being treated right, she'll steal 'em. Don't even know where she hides them." He'd opened the door on _at least_ half a dozen mornings so far to find Luna guiltily petting yet _another_ dog he'd never seen before.

Gladio snorted. "I see why Prompto likes her."

"She's not hard to get to like," Nyx admitted. "Once you get past the, you know. The whole terrifying Messenger of the Gods thing." Luna was pretty normal, public image aside.

Gladio studied Nyx, face unreadable but open, as if to say he knew how that was. Nyx, uncomfortable, broke eye contact to stare out at the star-filled sky above.

Gladio spoke. "I wasn't sure we'd win the war for a while there," he said. "But with those two in charge, I'm not sure what could have stopped us."

It'd been close. Nyx had thought he was dead more than once along the way — _the gods gave and took what they wanted,_ his mother had been fond of saying, before the gods had taken her, too — but he'd woken up every time with Luna's pale blue eyes above him, dark circles underneath, mouth thin and determined. His mother hadn't met Luna. Even the gods would've thought twice about taking anything from Luna without her blessing. And evidently, they had.

"You were there at the end," Nyx said.

"Not an ounce of self-preservation in those two," Gladio said. From what Nyx had heard about the mess, it was a wonder _anything_ of Eos had survived the clash between the Astrals and the Kings. But Luna and Noctis had made it.

Nyx hadn't been there. He'd heard about it after, the end of the Scourge; heard the accounts from Libertus, from Crowe; held Luna's hand in the infirmary as she laughed about the radio reports, tears in her eyes.

Gladio grunted and leaned back against the stone. "I like her," the Shield confessed. "Thought should couldn't be worth that much mooning over, for all those years Noct kept that flippy little notebook. She knew what she was doing, but you never saw her crack a smile. Didn't know what he saw in her." Gladio glanced at Nyx. "You can tell me I'm an asshole."

Nyx felt a small smirk cross his face. "I thought the Prince was kind of a brat," Nyx admitted.

Gladio snorted. "He is a brat." And fondness had never sounded so forlorn.

Nyx glanced at Gladio, just slightly sharp.

He remembered the slow news week headlines from back in the day. Sixteen — that was the age that Insomnia's tabloids had decided it was no longer in prohibitively bad taste to comment on the Prince's love life. On and off since then, Noctis had drifted in and out of the gossip columns, as had most of his Guard and his acquaintances along with him. Some members of the Glaive had made a pastime out of skimming the tabloids and taking bets on which rumors had something to them; then they'd send off whomever was on Citadel rotation next with instructions to keep an eye out for the answer. The Prince's engagement hadn't slowed the rumor mill down in the slightest. If anything, it'd made the speculation more furious than ever.

Nyx wondered if he might've finally stumbled across the answer. Well, one of them.

The wine was starting to get warm in Nyx's hand, and if there was any night to kick off a job badly by making a terrible impression on a new colleague, it'd be this one.

"How's he as a kisser?" Nyx asked the sky.

The question could've been interpreted a lot of ways, from an innocuous joke to something less so. Nyx figured he could hedge it.

Gladio was quiet a moment.

"Lazy," he said. "How's she?"

Nyx exhaled. _Less so._ "Never got to find out. Never will," he said.

Gladio accepted this without so much as a blink.

"What about the other two?" Nyx said. He might've been crossing too many lines here, but he couldn't really bring himself to care. This conversation was already happening, and they'd probably forget about it by morning anyway.

"They'll get over it," Gladio said shamelessly. Nyx got the feeling Gladio wouldn't.

Well. If he was going to be faced with a lifetime of endless suffering whilst surrounded by joyous celebration, at least Nyx wasn't alone.

Nyx stood, downing the rest of his wine and setting the glass lightly on the railing. "Guess I'll head back to my room," he said. "Might as well enjoy our last night off."

Gladio kept his face turned towards the Tenebraean mountains, distant silhouettes in the moonlight. "Sure," he said.

Nyx headed back towards the lavishly-decorated corridors beyond the torchlit stone arches. He started to undo the clasps on his uniform before he reached the steps. His key card was somewhere in his pockets. He hoped he remembered the palace layout right.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Gladio get up.

\---

Throughout the course of the rest of the night, Nyx would think of Clarus Amicitia at least three times.

He'd remember the stone-carved face of which he and most of the Glaive had lived in perpetual terror for the entirety of his career thus far. There would be a moment of panic. Nyx would think: _General Amicitia, sir, I am so, so sorry._

Then the moment would pass, and he'd thank the gods again that Luna seemed to like him. There'd have been no saving him otherwise.

\---

Nyx does remember the palace layout right. He gets the door unlocked before Gladio catches up to him, his jacket off by the time Gladio hesitantly toes it open again, and the fridge open, a bottle of complimentary champagne halfway uncorked on the table, before Gladio seems to give up on the pretense and just pries Nyx's mouth open with his own tongue. Nyx leans into it, hand going to the other man's wrist to pull him down.

Medals and buttons clink as they tumble onto the bed, trying to peel each other's vests off without tearing anything in their slightly-drunk fervor. Between the two of them, they're wearing too much wool and ballistic fabric. Nyx still has his boots on, Gladio still has his gloves on. Nyx is okay with it.

"How do you like it?" Gladio asks, low, breath quick against his ear when they break apart. Nyx can barely see him in the dark.

"Any which way," Nyx groans, as if he hasn't made enough ill-advised confessions tonight already.

Gladio just shimmies down, gloved hands hooking under Nyx's knees to pull him to the edge of the bed. His fingers skim back up Nyx's bare ribs as he settles above him, little patterns that halt for just a second whenever he feels a scar.

Nyx had a head start on the undressing thing, so he's down one article of clothing, and Gladio still has a shirt on. Nyx moves his hand to snag the hem, but Gladio pulls away a fraction, just a whisper too far. He slides his hands down into Nyx's trousers, and Nyx hisses, falling back, as fingers find him.

Gladio's elbows have his thighs pinned down, just heavy enough to stop him from jerking up, and Nyx's hand clenches on the sheets. He can't reach the body pressed up against his legs, can't feel the shape of it, can only flutter helplessly over the fingers working his length to hardness. And then he feels the wet warmth of tongue.

"Fuck," Nyx mutters.

The hand tightens on his cock, fingers circled at the base, and the mouth sinks down.

Nyx closes his eyes and threads his fingers through the kid's hair, long and feather-soft, and the mouth works, warm and wet and tentative and deep, fuck, fuck, this was a bad idea, fuck. One of the hands now bruising his hip is still glove-clad, and if Nyx closes his eyes and lets the room swim about him, wine in his veins, he can nearly imagine the gloves are lace.

Maybe Gladio knows exactly — too much of — what Nyx is thinking about, but he doesn't make a sound the whole way through, and Nyx thinks he can almost, almost —

\---

"You know what was a bad idea," Nyx pants, the new King's Shield's face pressed to the inside of his thigh.

"Falling for people who've been promised to each other since birth," comes the muffled reply.

"I was going to say that third shot of tequila," he gasps, "but sure, that too."

\---

It's a good thing Gladio likes it slow, apparently, because it takes Nyx a while to get back up, and it's a good thing it's the second time this night, because there's no way he'd have lasted long enough to not owe Gladio big if it'd been the first.

Gladio's on the bed now, sheets long since rucked up into an unsalvageable mess, long legs hooked over Nyx's arms and mouth open and soft choked noises, and Nyx steals a long, guilty glance before his own eyes flutter shut and he presses himself in, shallow movements melting into a deep rolling rhythm, one that draws hissed breaths whenever Nyx jerks his hips.

Nyx leans down and licks a stripe up the other man's chest, drags his teeth lightly against a nipple, and Gladio curses and bucks up, back arched, fingers curled in the back of Nyx's bicep.

Nyx wonders what the King calls him in bed, if anything.

He has the courtesy not to try it though, and he grits his teeth as he feels the other man clench around him. Gladio bites off whatever he'd been about to say, too, low cry coming out broken, and Nyx barely hears it.

\---

The room has a balcony, high up over the gardens. Nyx can see the fountains, the crumbling low stone walls and arches, hazy shapes in the blue light below. Across the way, the palace corridors are still lit up, and Nyx can see the tower, light from the royal quarters within which the King and the Queen are ostensibly enjoying their first evening alone together. The first of many, of years to come.

Gladio stands next to him. Shoulders bare now, Nyx can see the ink on the other man's skin, already light at the edges from scarring and healing. He wonders if Gladio can read the lines on Nyx's skin — whether Gladio feels the same eyes on his back around the Crown City.

Nyx digs his pockets for a lighter, offers a cigarette. "You smoke?"

"Shouldn't," Gladio says on an exhale. Nyx forgets that the kid wouldn't have been old enough to pick up the habit by the time he started training, and by then it'd have been a bad idea, future King of the free world assassinated due to his Shield's deficient lung capacity. Nyx withdraws the carton and pulls one out for himself.

The sun's beginning to rise in the east, low pink glow on the horizon. It'll be a clear day, beautiful: purple mist in the valley, mountains lit up like green and gold fire against the blue sky, air thick with the fresh scent of wildflowers and seaside, in patent contrast to Insomnia's miasma. Nyx can already tell.

Gladio's been working at a last glass of champagne, and he finishes it reluctantly. Nyx sees him get up in the corner of his eye. Gladio meanders over to the bed and collapses onto it, already half-asleep.

Nyx lingers behind for longer. The full moon hangs in the sky above, soft and vivid. He stares at it for a while.

Once he finishes his cigarette, Nyx goes to join Gladio on the bed.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (somewhere, noct and luna have gone their five rounds, and they are now, let us be clear, slowly hatching a plan.)
> 
> Thanks for reading! Comment/kudos to make my day :)


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